humanity vs progress

“Move out or be fined”, those are the words from a Malaysian minister to the organizations that feed the homeless in KL city center. There are many arguments on the rationale of this move from both sides of the fence. In a nutshell it sounds cruel to deprive the homeless of aid and relief. However, the minister came up with an argument that the homeless creates much problem for the city to thrive, in sense of tourism and cleanliness.

A city is built by its people. No doubt, it will be ideal if the people living in the city able to contribute immensely and effectively for the city to progress. Are the homeless considered a scourge in this sense since they are being seen not contributing in any way? Human resource management has taught us, each individual in regardless of his competence level will be able to contribute in one way or another for the cause. In this case, the homeless are doing odd jobs within the city and without them, who will take up these jobs? A job no matter how menial is still required to be completed to run a city.

We should not just dismiss these homeless aside and writing them off wantonly. In fact, there are so many success stories of homeless people becoming self-sufficient later in their lives. One of the famous one is Chris Gardner, portrayed in the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness". He was homeless with a young son while he was in a finance training program. Therefore we should provide assistance to the homeless in every way we can. They would not be in that state if they have a choice.

As Mahatma Gandhi puts it, “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”…..more so of its people. God bless Malaysia.